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Cuomo, Serafina (2000). Divide and rule: Frontinus and Roman land-surveying. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 31 (2)189-202. This is an author-produced version of a paper published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A (ISSN 0039-3681). This version has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof corrections, published layout or pagination.

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KEY WORDS: Roman science; land-surveying; imperialism; ancient

mathematics; Frontinus; ancient technology

ABSTRACT: This paper aims to cast new light on one of our main sources for

ancient science, Sextus Julius Frontinus; to cast new light on the science of the

Greco-Roman period; and to contribute ancient materials to present

discussions on the relations between power and knowledge, and/or science

and empire.

1

DIVIDE AND RULE: FRONTINUS AND ROMAN LAND-SURVEYING

Serafina Cuomo*

Imperialism [...] is an act of geographical violence

through which virtually any space in the world

is explored, charted, and finally brought under control.1

This article has three main aims: to cast new light on one of our main sources

for ancient science, Sextus Julius Frontinus; to cast new light on the science of

the Greco-Roman period; and to contribute ancient materials to present

discussions on the relations between power and knowledge, and/or science

and empire.

Probably a homo novus, whose family may have been from Gallia

Narbonensis, Frontinus rose to become, according to a younger

contemporary, one of “the most respected citizens of his time”2. His public

career was long and varied: he may have been procurator in Spain in AD 68

and was at the head of an army in Gaul by AD 70. He also fought in Britain,

where he was governor ca. 76, before handing the command over to Agricola.

During this time he defeated the tribe of the Silures of North-East Wales and

started to build a road through their territory. It also seems that he led an

* Christ's College, Cambridge CB2 3BU (UK). Received 12 February 1998; in revised form 15 October 1999.

2

army in Germany around AD 83. In between military expeditions, he had

been nominated praetor and then prefect of the city of Rome and, perhaps in

73, consul for the first time. He was proconsul of Asia ca. AD 86 and consul in

98 and again in 100 (both times his partner in the consulship was the Emperor

Trajan). We also know that he was appointed supervisor of the aqueducts

(probably in AD 97); that he was augur until Pliny the Younger took over

from him in 103, and that at some point he was elected to sit on a senatorial

committee in charge of reducing public expenditure. Frontinus' death can be

placed in AD 103, given that augurs were usually appointed for life3.

Frontinus is often described as the quintessential Roman public officer: a

sober, pragmatic, no-nonsense kind of man, the embodiment of ‘typical’

Roman pragmatism, which valued practical applications of science over pure

speculations and led him to praise Rome's water supply system thus:

With so many necessary buildings carrying so many waters

compare, if you like, the idle pyramids or the other works of the

Greeks, inane but celebrated by fame4.

The remark above is contained in Frontinus' most famous work, about the

aqueducts of the city of Rome (De aquis urbis Romae). He also wrote a book on

military tactics (the Stratagemata), and one on land-surveying (De arte

mensoria)5. It is on this latter that my article will concentrate.

Several studies have already been published on Roman land-surveying, so we

need not repeat the basics here: historians have examined how centuriation

3

(the division of land according to a uniform square pattern) was actually

carried out in the field; what were the procedures and instruments involved;

and what the mathematical knowledge of the agrimensores amounted to. They

have speculated on the land-surveyors' training, and on the influence of

Greek mathematics on their treatises. There are accounts, based on literary,

legal and epigraphical evidence, of how the role of the agrimensores changed

over time, and of their social composition6.

Finally, more recent essays have underlined the political significance of land-

surveying as an instrument of Empire, sometimes by reference to particular

regions7. Centuriation has been described as

a spectacular display of the conqueror's power. Although some

environments are more tractable than others for centuriation, the

amenability of the terrain does not determine this response [...]

Much more important is the wish to punish and repress.8

While land-surveying is being recognized as a fundamental part of the

processes of ‘Romanization’, or, more generally, of administration of the

Empire, I think one important factor is being left out of the picture.

Centuriation did not simply happen - the acts of geographical violence were

carried out by people, i.e. the agrimensores. In a more or less official capacity,

they dealt with the business of dividing up the land, assigning it in ways that

could be recognized as equitable and acting as experts in disputes about

boundaries, ownership or rights of way.

4

Most of the studies to which I have referred talk about the agrimensores as if

they were more or less impersonal or uncomplicated elements in an activity

which in a sense overrides them as individuals: the evidence from the Corpus

Agrimensorum Romanorum (a collection which is our main literary source on

land-surveying) is generally used as if the manifest differences in the time,

aims and social circumstances of its authors could be ignored. It is true that

cross-references, commenting and excerpting are common practice in the

Corpus; and it is also true that the land-surveyors saw themselves, to some

extent, as a group - but to what extent is not clear. Indeed, in my view, we still

know very little about how the agrimensores saw themselves, their job, the

kind of knowledge it required, the ethical and political connotations it carried.

Frontinus is one of the few authors in the Corpus on whom we have separate

evidence, he belonged to the ruling elite, so he looks like the ideal case-study.

Back to his treatise on land-surveying9, it is traditionally divided into four

parts, the first of which describes three types of terrain: parcelled out and

assigned (“divisus et adsignatus”); measured by its boundaries (“mensura per

extremitatem conprehensus”) and not measured (“qui nulla mensura

continetur” or arcifinius). Different types corresponded to different

administrative and fiscal status: for instance, the first type, as Frontinus

indicates, was typical of Roman settlements, called coloniae, whose land was

distributed, for instance, to war veterans, while the third type of field was

originally frontier territory. The second part of Frontinus' text testifies to the

legal role of land-surveyors: fifteen types of controversies are presented upon

5

which the practitioner may be called to express his professional opinion,

either directly or as the advisor of a judge. These included disputes about

boundaries, ownership, public pastures, flood water, rights of way and so on.

A short history of land-division and a discussion of various units of measure

are taken up in the third part. Frontinus follows the first-century BC author

Varro in attributing the origin of the surveying art to the Etruscan haruspices, a

group of official diviners who not only read omens, but decided the best sites

for the foundation of temples and cities. A haruspex would orientate the sides

of a temple in the direction of the four cardinal points. This practice,

Frontinus claims, is at the origin of the laying out by the land-surveyor of the

two main lines of orientation for a centuriation grid, decumanus and cardo.

The fourth part of Frontinus' treatise, which goes by the title On the art of

measuring, deals with the land-surveyor's task in general. It starts thus:

The basis of the art of measuring lies in the experience of the

agent. It is in fact impossible to express the truth of the places or of

the size without calculable lines, because the wavy and uneven

edge of any piece of land is enclosed by a boundary which,

because of the great quantity of unequal angles, can be contracted

or expanded, even when their number [of the angles] remains the

same. Indeed pieces of land which are not finally demarcated have

a fluctuating space and an uncertain determination of iugera. But,

in order that for each border its type is established and the size of

what is enclosed within is determined, we will divide the piece of

6

land, to the extent allowed by the position of the place, with

straight lines. [...] We also calculate the area enclosed within the

lines using the method of the right angles. [...] Having assigned

boundaries to its space, we restore the place's own truth. The

multifarious nature of places does not let this occur in the same

way everywhere, since in some places there are mountains on one

side, elsewhere a river, or banks or some gorge with steep ground,

with many uneven and rough places, also often there are

cultivations, because of which it is necessary to make the most of

the richness of the art. For any smallest part of the land which is to

be in the power of the measurer must be bound with the method

of the right angles, according to what he requires.10

This text is remarkable for many aspects, but let me just single out two of

them: the idea that there is a ‘truth’ of the place, and the references to straight

lines and right angles.

The two things are connected, in that Frontinus is saying that expressing the

‘truth’ of a place depends on its being enclosed by a network of straight lines

intersecting at right angles. What Frontinus also seems to be saying is that

there is a sense in which a territory like the field of the type “divisus et

adsignatus” described in the first part of the treatise is true, while a field

which is “arcifinius” is not, and the criterion for truth is that the “divisus et

adsignatus” territory is described in a specific way - a geometric way.

7

If we think that the straight lines in question were not just ideal lines, but

concretely roads, ditches or hedges, this is geometrization in a strong sense:

the land-surveyor transforms the landscape, the territory becomes a different

kind of object from what it was before. Geometrization has obviously the

advantage of making the piece of land amenable to measurement and

calculation: the land-surveyor is now able officially to express its size. The

operation in question, called “renuntiatio modi”, is often mentioned in our

legal and epigraphical sources11.

The two operations of mapping out the territory and calculating its size - of

measuring and counting, of mathematizing the territory - are made to equate

truth, or, in other words, are seen as amounting to an expression of the real

nature of the territory. In this sense, centuriation is also a knowledge act. In

Frontinus' passage, the identification between mathematization and

knowledgeability is reinforced by a language of grasping, surrounding and

enclosing. These words denote both the physical, material act of setting

boundaries and drawing lines around plots of land, and the knowledge act of

the surveyor, who, by mapping out the plot of land and expressing its size

with a number, apprehends it.

The act of centuriation, which is, at a basic level, a ‘practical’ or ‘technical’ act,

is thus inextricably intertwined with knowledge acts and, to the extent to

which ‘grasping’ a territory means establishing control over it, is also a deeply

political act. Thus, the fields whose borders are not conclusively demarcated

(literally, they are ‘open-ended’, soluti) can arbitrarily grow and diminish in

8

size: non-measured equals confusion, uncertainty, instability. The opposition

between surveyed and non-surveyed territory in Frontinus is presented as

one between straight (lines) and right (angles) on the one side and sinuous,

wavy or oblique (lines) on the other. These terms are not just descriptive - in

ancient Latin and Greek usage, and still in many languages today, they

usually carried positive or negative connotations. We still say that someone is

crooked or that something is straightforward12.

To sum up, Frontinus' account of the business of land-surveying conveys the

idea that the mathematization of an object (a field in this case) makes it into

the object of reliable knowledge, the idea that this operation brings control

over the object and the idea that it has positive political and, by extension,

ethical significance.

Now, if we look at Frontinus' treatise on the aqueducts, the same ideas are

conveyed, often employing similar terminology. One of the points that De

aquis makes more forcibly is the state of chaos and mismanagement with

which Frontinus was faced when he took up his job as supervisor for the

water supply in Rome. A great number of private citizens tapped illegally into

public reservoirs or conduits; they often used nozzles or pipes larger than

they had been permitted to use; they used water for improper purposes, such

as sewage disposal. The problems faced by Frontinus are not due to adverse

physical conditions - the enemy to subdue is not so much hostile nature (as

was at least partly the case with land-surveying) as much as irresponsible and

corrupt members of the body politic. That said, Frontinus' task was not much

9

unlike that of having to bring a wild territory under rule and square, so to

speak, and the way he went about it presents some parallels to what he

prescribes for the land-surveyor.

First of all, he says, he had a map made of the aqueducts, to see where the

conduits lay, and get a better idea about their maintenance and repair. Map-

making was of course one of the agrimensores' primary tasks, and there have

been many studies on the administrative and political role of maps. Indeed, it

is extremely likely that the same people, probably apparitores whose technical

competences extended from architecture to land-surveying, produced both

maps like the one Frontinus required for his aqueducts, and cadaster maps

like the one found at Orange or larger-scale items like the Forma Urbis itself13.

Secondly, Frontinus streamlined his administrative domain. Each aqueduct is

systematically described in the text first in terms of its history and then in

terms of numbers: figures are given for its length, the distance between its

source and the city, and finally its output, assessed on the basis of the

diameter of the pipes14. Thanks to his measurements, he claims, Frontinus was

able to detect frauds and abuses, because he noticed the discrepancy between

input at source and output once inside the city. The emphasis put on

measurement and the overall mathematical outlook provide Frontinus with a

rhetoric of objectivity and accuracy in which to embed his presentation of

himself as an honest and competent administrator15.

Finally, Frontinus chose one particular type of pipe, the quinaria, as the

standard type and ruled that authorized standard pipes and nozzles had to be

10

stamped with an official mark, and no unstamped pipes or nozzles could be

used. Imposing a standard is clearly at the same time a pragmatic

administrative choice - uniformity facilitates repairs and control of

misappropriations - and a political one - the fact itself that someone has the

authority to set a standard unequivocally signals where the power lies.

Now, it is often assumed that Roman land-surveying used a standard

measure unit of twenty by twenty actus for centuriation. Much as that would

help my argument, I think that further careful review of the evidence is

necessary before such a strong claim can be sustained. Yet, a weaker claim can

certainly be made that centuriation in general was a type of standardization,

the imposition of uniformity on a territory and therefore also an indication of

authority, as well as a form of unification and amalgamation of different

social, juridical and geographical realities and a way for centralized power to

exert control over the peripheries16.

It is to be noted that the term (in itself rather unusual, at least in this context)

that Frontinus uses to denote non-standardized nozzles is again soluti, ‘open-

ended’, and indeed, like the non-centuriated fields, non-standardized nozzles

could be enlarged and diminished in an uncontrolled way by dishonest

people. Then again, when Frontinus talks about the size of the pipes, or the

amount of water they deliver, the word he uses is modus, the same term

employed by him and in a general land-surveying context to indicate the size

of a field. The role of the public officer is in either case a form of control,

management and distribution to the body politic of an essential means of

11

living (water or land), according to modalities and in quantities which are

monitored by the administrative powers. The modus is an expression of the

way in which the distribution and control of those essential means of living

were conceptualized.

Analogously to the land-surveying treatise, the treatise on aqueducts teems

with quite explicit ethical overtones: a lack of stable measurements brings

about abuse and fraud, while

everything that is bounded by measure must be certain,

unchanged and equal to itself.17

The imposition of a standard is a way of avoiding arbitrariness and an act of

justice, just as parcelling out land in equal lots grants equality of distribution.

Also, measuring land is made to amount to restoring something that

essentially belonged to the place, its truth.

The emerging picture is, then, one where the administrative tasks of land-

surveyor and aqueduct-surveyor have got something in common. Were the

people involved in land-surveying the same as those involved in aqueduct-

surveying? The question is basically a question about the audience of

Frontinus' treatises, and, in the case of De aquis, it has received some

satisfactory (at least in my view) answers. Frontinus' account, written around

AD 98, has been seen as the expression of the Senate's claims to a more

prominent deliberative role in the administration. After Domitian's death in

96 and Nerva's brief principate, a year followed when Trajan, the new

12

Emperor elect, was away from Rome. The Senate apparently took this

opportunity to reinstate some decisional power and hail the return of old

privileges. With his celebration of the perfect administrator of senatorial rank

(an ideal embodied by himself, whose exemplary cursus honorum duly

included governorships and military experience), Frontinus was thus

expressing ideas about running the state which were shared by his fellow

senators18.

Arguably, that can be said of his ideas about land-surveying, too. To borrow

Purcell's phrase again, I am of the opinion that these ideas were

intimately connected with the structures of power and with the

whole range of ways in which those who managed the Roman

state conceived of their imperium in the world19.

Interpreting De arte mensoria presents the additional problem that, unlike De

aquis and Stratagemata, it does not seem to be immediately connected with any

of Frontinus' public appointments.

First of all, the links between land-surveying and military surveyors and

road-builders on the one hand, and augurship and omen-taking on the other

are well attested. Thus, we can assume that once again Frontinus' works did

stem in some way from his public roles. But I do not think that Frontinus

actually was a land-surveyor, and I think it is important to underline this,

because it distinguishes him from several authors in the Corpus, some of them

13

probably younger contemporaries of his, who mention their first-hand

experiences in the field or refer to land-surveying as “our profession”20.

Frontinus' treatises on land-surveying, again unlike the others in the Corpus,

contain little in the way of actual mensuration procedures or techniques. He

does not come across as a technical expert in land-surveying; nor is he an

expert on aqueducts: in the latter case, he actually declares his wish to

familiarize himself with the job21. At the same time, he is aware of the power

that expertise can command, and wants to make sure that the leadership

remains firmly in his own hands, rather than being delegated to others who

possess the ‘know-how’ he lacks. He says in De aquis:

There is nothing as dishonourable for a decent man as to conduct

an office entrusted to him on the basis of the prescriptions of his

assistants, which it is necessary to do, every time that the

ignorance of the person in charge has recourse to the experience of

those who, even though they are parts necessary to the task,

should still be like some sort of hand and instrument of the

agent.22

I think that passages like the one quoted above throw some light on the

contentious question of professionalism in the Roman imperial

administration23. Although career advancement, as is well known, was mainly

a function of social status, connections and, at most, service in the army, it is

also true that issues such as the importance of competence or expertise did

14

arise. Especially in cases where some specialized knowledge was required for

the task at hand (for instance, architects or indeed land-surveyors), there was

potential for clashes between leadership by prestige, so to speak, and the

potential for leadership given by experience, know-how and a different

network of connections built over the years. Think of the aquarii themselves,

who clearly were more powerful with respect to the average citizen than

Frontinus himself, who was ‘in charge’ fleetingly and probably without much

expectation of real involvement24.

If indeed Frontinus was making a stance for senatorial entitlement to key

administrative tasks, his technical treatises would have provided the edge

required, in that they informed about some technical matters (enough to

prove one's authority) while at the same time stressing the political, ethical

and intellectual values involved, so that leadership could reassuringly not be

limited to expertise, but be presented as depending on a number of qualities

that public officers like himself embodied at their best.

Most of the land-surveying activity in the period that goes from Vespasian to

Trajan seems to have been concerned less with the centuriation of new

settlements25 than with the administration of old ones. We have numerous

inscriptions from various parts of the Empire which document mainly two

kinds of activity: resolution of boundary disputes and restitution of ager

publicus (public land) to public ownership26. The Orange cadaster dates from

this period; it was accompanied by a large inscription, dated AD 77, with

15

which the emperor Vespasian announced the restitution of public land and

some other revisions of land administration in the area.

The intervention on the part of the government in local territorial situations,

denoted by the inscriptions relative to land-surveying, was often unpopular.

For instance, restitution of public land in most cases meant that the Emperor

could then lease the land to private individuals and use the money to fill up

the state coffers, which under Vespasian's predecessor had reached an all-

time low. Some of these operations provoked such negative reactions that

reversing them could be a good means to acquire some favour: Domitian for

instance, effectively nullifying Vespasian's and Titus' decisions, returned

some land to those land owners who had had the usufruct of it for more than

a certain period27.

Or again, in a group of inscriptions, dating ca. AD 114, Caius Avidius

Nigrinus, pro-praetorian legate to Achaea during the principate of Trajan,

documented the settlement of several disputes between Delphi and

neighbouring cities. After listening to the parties in question, personally

inspecting the boundary areas and examining the evidence, in the form both

of previous decrees and of testimonies, Nigrinus declared in one inscription:

After devoting quite a lot of time to this business and having

scrutinized for several days anything that could be gathered from

knowledge of individuals or from extant documents, I have

included in this decision what seemed to agree the most with the

judgement of the memory-men; a decision on the basis of which,

16

even if it does not quite fulfil the hopes of each party, at least in

the future they will be able to see what their actual possessions

are, thanks to the goodness of the emperor, and this will happen

without dispute28.

The inscriptions from Delphi give a glimpse into the difficulty of managing

factors such as conflicting authorities and claims to competence, the

importance of old traditions and the role of local officers as opposed to

‘imported’ ones.

Indeed, discord ripples the surface of Frontinus' accounts, both De aquis and

De arte mensoria (and let us not forget that the third treatise is on war

stratagems, including various chapters on how to avoid rebellion among the

soldiers, and when to profit from treachery on the enemy's part). The territory

which the land-surveyor has to bring under control presents all sorts of

hostile features: gorges, valleys, mountains, and discord was internal to the

administrative machine itself: official figures, such as the watermen (aquarii),

are represented as unmitigatedly corrupt. In both cases, the administrator is

faced with chaos and wilderness, both physical and moral, and it is his duty

to regulate and harness them. The other presence haunting Frontinus'

accounts is the people to be administered, the customers, so to speak; the

beneficiaries of land and water. In this case too control was not easy: the

hostile reactions with which Vespasian met, or the complex negotiations

going on in Delphi, are just examples.

17

Control was not easy - this gives an extra spin to Frontinus' idea of

mathematization as imposing order on a territory. The imposition of order is a

dialectic, dynamic process through which a model of administrative control is

applied to the specific nature of a place. This dynamic implies a negotiation of

various factors, and I think that the role played by mathematics and by

mathematical imagery in this negotiation is fundamental. On the one hand,

mathematics guaranteed the possibility and reliability of calculations, and

made cataloguing and recording easier, so it was ‘directly’ useful. On the

other hand, it was the values associated with mathematics - fairness,

accountability, order, stability, justice - that bolstered the propaganda or, if

you like, that mediated the relationship between land-surveyor and land and

occupiers, between supervisor of the aqueducts and water supply and people

using the water, between administrators and the administered29.

The kind of rhetoric, or of imagery, whereby justice and fairness were

associated with mathematics had been in place for some time, in fact, since

early Greek civilization, and it was often deployed in the context of

administration and sometimes of land division itself30. Greek colonies were

supposedly instituted on the assumption that all the people would receive

equal plots of land; geometry itself, according to several authors, had

originated from the need for equitable land administration. A first-century

AD Greek geometer, Hero of Alexandria, claimed:

The distribution of land according to proportion, equal land to

equals and more land to those who deserve it, is universally

18

judged convenient and necessary. Indeed the entire earth is also

divided by nature itself according to merit; correspondingly a

great people is assigned a large region, while sometime a small

region to a small people, on the same basis. Analogously cities are

divided only according to merit: to the leaders and to those who

are capable of governing is given more and, according to

proportion, to those who are not at all capable of governing one

leaves over the small places [...] Yet, if one wants to divide [...]

according to a given ratio, so that not even a grain of millet, as it

were, of the proportion exceeds or falls short of the given ratio, it

takes geometry alone. In this latter, in fact, there is impartial

accord, justice, by means of the proportion, and the demonstration

of these things is indisputable, which none of the other arts or

sciences guarantees31.

We can also add that some Latin literature, earlier than Frontinus but still

widely read around Frontinus’ time, had associated land-surveying and

injustice. Apart from Cicero, a number of poets between the end of the first

century BC and the beginning of the first century AD created a sort of literary

topos whereby land division was one of the distinctive signs that the golden

age was well and truly over.

This all goes the better to understand, I think, the background to Frontinus'

rhetorical strategies. When he presents mathematization as a guarantee of

19

reliability and, indirectly, of justice in land administration, he does so the

more strongly as there were positions to the contrary. The point is not

whether mathematics was actually used, but that it fulfilled a rhetorical

function, especially in the presence of opposing views.

Let us turn to some conclusions. There is often, I think, an assumption that

forms of knowledge with a practical edge, and especially the mathematics

which is directly concerned with measuring and calculating, are ‘simple’.

They are not the object of reflection, they do not carry ethical or political

values - they are not used as carriers of values, they are not an essential part of

the culture that produced them but are pushed to the margins. Yet, if one

looks hard enough at our evidence, one sees that it is not like that, at least not

completely. Frontinus was not at the margins of society. The ‘simple’

operation of dividing up the land was a very complex negotiation.

Frontinus' case can also be instructive in reconsidering some still widely-held

notions of ‘theory’, ‘practice’, their distinction and their prevalence in Roman

vis-à-vis Greek science. Centuriation, as a form of control, is both theoretical,

ideological, the display of power, and practical, concrete, violent, the actual

enforcement of power, or rather it is neither theoretical nor practical, because

those categories, which are never used by Frontinus anyway, are not useful

here. Far from taking at face value sound-bites such as Cicero's much-quoted

With [the Greeks] geometry was held in utmost honour, so that

nothing was considered more prestigious than mathematicians,

20

but we [the Romans] have restricted the form of this art to the

utility of measuring and reckoning32

or Frontinus' ‘appreciation’ of pyramids, we should go behind the surface, see

these statements in their context and finally start taking Roman science

seriously.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A version of this paper in the French language is forthcoming in Rome et la

science (Bruxelles), and oral versions have been delivered in Oxford,

Cambridge and Ames, whose audiences have contributed many useful

comments. I would also like to thank R. Ashcroft, B. Campbell, P. Cartledge,

M. Crawford, D. Fowler, M. Frasca Spada, O. Gal, P. Garnsey, N. Jardine,

G.E.R. Lloyd, R. Netz, J. Patterson, N. Purcell, S. Roux, D. Sedley, L. Taub.

Translations are mine unless stated otherwise.

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21

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1 Said (1993), 271.

2 Pliny Jr., Epistulae 5.1.

3 On Frontinus' life, see e.g. Ward-Perkins (1937); Eck (1970) and review by

Jones (1973); Birley (1981), 69 ff.; Baldwin (1994). Cf. also Head & Poole (1892),

nos. 133-135 for the coins from his appointment in Asia.

4 Frontinus, De aquis 16. The reference to pyramids could be considered a topos

since it can already be found in that other representative of Roman-ness, Pliny

the Elder (died AD 79) - he had commented that pyramids were “the idle and

stupid ostentation of the wealth of kings”, Historia Naturalis 36.17.81.

5 On the Stratagems, see Campbell (1987). Among the most recent studies on

De aquis are Bruun (1991); Evans (1994); DeLaine (1996).

26

6 For instance, Dilke (1971); Hinrichs (1974); Misurare la terra (1984-); the

papers collected in Behrends & Capogrossi Colognesi (1992); Chouquer &

Favory (1992).

7 For instance, Clavel-Lévêque (1988); Campbell (1995) and (1996); Castillo

Pascual (1993) and (1996).

8 Purcell (1990), 16 and (1996).

9 I have used K. Thulin's edition of the text (Leipzig: Teubner 1913) whenever

possible. As far as Frontinus is concerned, the principal difference with the

other main edition (by F. Blume, K. Lachmann, A. Rudorff, Berlin: Reimer

1848-52) seems to be in the handling of Agennius Urbicus, a later author who

wrote commentaries on Frontinus, as a source for Frontinus himself.

Lachmann & alii were more optimistic than Thulin in thinking that some parts

of Urbicus' text can be ascribed to Frontinus' with some degree of certainty.

The text of Frontinus in Thulin's edition is thus a ‘minimalist’ version.

10 “Principium artis mensoriae in agentis positum est experimento. Exprimi

enim locorum aut modi veritas sine rationabilibus lineis non potest, quoniam

omnium agrorum extremitas flexuosa et inaequalis cluditur finitione

[Hinrichs reads flexuosa et inaequalis as adjectives of extremitas, finitione in

relation to the following relative sentence], quae propter angulorum

dissimilium multitudinem numeris suis manentibus et cohiberi potest et

extendi. Nam soluti mobile habent spatium et incertam iugerum

enuntiationem. Sed ut omnibus extremitatibus species sua constet et intra

27

clusi modus enuntietur, agrum, quousque loci positio permittet, rectis lineis

dimetiemur. [...] Modum autem intra lineas clusum rectorum angulorum

ratione subducimus. [...] adscriptis spatio suo finibus ipsam loci reddimus

veritatem. Haec ubique una ratione fieri multiplex locorum natura non

patitur, oppositis ex alia parte montibus, alia flumine aut ripis aut quadam

iacentis soli voragine, cum pluribus fragosorum locorum iniquitatibus, saepe

et cultura, propter quae maxime ad artis copiam est recurrendum. Debet enim

minima quaeque pars agri, quae in potestate mensoris est abitura, rectorum

angulorum ratione sua postulatione constringi”. Text in Hinrichs (1992).

11 Cf. e.g. Hinrichs (1974), 80 ff. Renuntiatio was used to refer to assessing the

results of elections in the Roman republic and early Empire, see Hinrichs

(1974), 85.

12 Early examples are e.g. the contrast between ‘straight’ and ‘crooked’ in

Hesiod, Works and Days, or the poem by Simonides where the perfect man is

described as being “square without fault” (tetravgwnon a[neu yovgou), in

Fragmenta 542 (apud Plato, Protagoras 339a-346d). For later usage check

Liddell-Scott sub vocibus.

13 Cf. e.g. Piganiol (1962); Sherk (1974); Salviat (1977); Conticello de'Spagnolis

(1984) and review in Rodriguez Almeida (1988); Nicolet (1988) and review in

Millar (1988); Taub (1993). On apparitores see Purcell (1983).

14 On problems connected with measuring the water output see Landels

(1978); Rodgers (1986); Hodge (1993).

28

15 Cf. Bruun (1991). While I agree that the function of the numbers in De aquis

is to some extent “a rhetorical device” and serves the end of “confirming

power”, I do not think, contra DeLaine, that the rhetoric at work is along the

lines of “[manufacturing] an air of mystery around the subject” or “generating

wonder”, see (1996), 128 and 139, respectively. In my opinion, a different kind

of rhetoric is at work here.

16 Standardization was of course not unfamiliar in other parts of the Roman

world, e.g. brick or amphorae production, evidence quoted in Bruun (1991), 56.

17 De aquis 34.

18 One of the most recent supporters of this view is DeLaine (1996), who

quotes previous bibliography.

19 Purcell (1990), 15.

20 E.g. Balbus, an army-trained land-surveyor who fought with Trajan or

perhaps with Domitian in the Dacian wars (or perhaps against the Germanic

tribes, for the uncertainties of interpretation, see Dilke (1971), 42) Ad Celsum

expositio et ratio omnium formarum 93.14 (Blume edition); Siculus Flaccus, who,

according to Dilke (1971), 44, dates from the third century AD, De

condicionibus agrorum 98.9.

21 De aquis 1.

22 De aquis 2. The ‘agent’ is the main character in the passage I quoted from De

arte mensoria as well.

23 On the issues of careers in the administration, see e.g. Saller (1982).

29

24 See also Cicero's unmitigatedly negative images of land-surveyors, who are

portrayed as social climbers who use their task to gain wealth and power: De

lege agraria e.g. 2.17.45; 2.20.53; Philippicae 11.5.12; 14.4.10.

25 New centuriations were carried out in Pannonia during Trajan's principate,

cf. Moatti (1993), 94.

26 The evidence collected in Hinrichs (1974); Moatti (1983). Cf. also Watkins

(1988-89).

27 Agennius Urbicus, De controversiis agrorum 41.16 ff. Blume's edition

attributed this passage to Frontinus himself.

28 In Plassart (1970), 294-295.

29 In this light, I would say that the numbers in De aquis belong not to the

rhetoric of ‘mystery’ but to that of ‘accountability’ - they are there for

everybody to see and check for themselves, if they want and are able to do so.

Once again, this use of numbers had a long tradition e.g. in the Athenian city-

state.

30 Cf. e.g. Harvey (1965); Boyd & Jameson (1981); Burford (1993); Cartledge

(1996); contra Asheri (1975).

31 Hero, Metrica 140.5-142.2. It has been convincingly argued that some of the

authors in the Corpus knew Hero's work: cf. Clavel-Lévêque (1992); Folkerts

(1992); Guillaumin (1992).

32 Tusculanae disputationes 1.2.5.

30